Our stairs have seen a lot in their 105 years.
At least once a day they see a little blonde girl going up and down, practicing her English as she counts each step out loud.
For nearly 30 years they saw the Spanish couple that lived in the apartment before we moved in. And in those 30 years they never saw a France Telecom worker make their way to the door because the couple never felt the need to install a phone line. All that changed the first day the Americans moved in...
Once the stairs saw me up-close and personal when I fell down the top flight with a bag of recycling in one hand and a bag of trash in the other. They have never seen me taking out the recycling or trash since that day, but they see Jonathan do it twice a week.
In the winter they see a slender woman in bright colors sneak up the stairs to the attic to roll her cigarette and smoke, avoiding the three flights of stairs and the icy air outside.
How many re-usable grocery bags have these stairs seen hauled up their steps? How many times have they seen people stop and pause on the landings to catch their breath and take a look out the window?
Three years ago these stairs saw the body of a young woman carried down, her apartment filled with gas fumes. For weeks afterwards, they heard her alarm clock go off every morning. No one was home to turn it off.
Recently, these stairs have been regularly sprinkled (not dunked - they aren't Baptist) as I carry water down to the garden. On the way back up, I leave mud on the stairs next to the drops of water.
At around 11am, they see the postman delivering bills and letters into each apartment's assigned box on the ground floor. Of course, they don't see him on Sundays or the 11 public holidays.
These stairs have heard many languages spoken by its residents. In the last ten years they've heard French, Italian, Polish, English, Spanish and Arabic.
If these stairs could talk, the stories they could tell.
